Q: I have been experiencing health benefits from drinking diatomaceous-earth-enriched water and have been recommending this dietary practice to others. Please can you answer this question that has been posed to me by one of those to whom I have made this recommendation .... 'My main question is, do you think it’s OK for me to drink the solution since I only have one kidney?

A: No, it would not hurt the kidneys. In fact we consume silica all the time in the fibrous foods we eat, and waters we drink, such as spring water.

The reason I recommend adding silica to drinking water is because too many people are drinking purified waters (reverse osmosis or distilled), which strips the body of beneficial vitamins and minerals. Many people do not believe this because they hear that drinking purified waters is better for them. I even had a naturopathic doctor on the Yahoo boards kick me off the board because I proved he was wrong when he claimed that purified waters did not eliminate vitamins and minerals from the body. Though, he was upset because I proved a lot of his other claims wrong as well. Then I had a sales rep who swore up and down that water had a "brain" and did not dissolve minerals from the body, only toxins.

Neither seem to recall in science that water is the universal solvent. If water cannot dissolve minerals as they claim, then how do we get hard water? How do the minerals get in to our system? How do they get excreted in the urine? By the same token, ever take a B vitamin supplement or a lot of vitamin C? Notice how it changes the color of your urine. If water did not dissolve vitamins then again how did they get in to our bodies, and how are they being excreted in the urine? The answer is that water is a solvent. It not only dissolves toxins in the body, but vitamins and minerals as well. The more pure water is the more solvent it becomes, and therefore the more likely it will leach beneficial minerals from the body.

For example if we took two glasses, and filled one with tap water, and one with purified water, both at the same temperature. Then we started to dissolve vitamin C in to the waters. We will observe two things. One is that yes, water will dissolve vitamin C, just like it can do in the body. Secondly, we would find that the purified water will dissolve a greater amount of vitamin C than the tap water. The reason is that the tap water is already partially saturated with the dissolved minerals from the soil, and therefore cannot dissolve as much vitamin C. Again purified waters can dissolve minerals in the body in the same manner that it saturates with minerals from the soil.

Drinking spring water does not pose as much of a problem since the water must give up its minerals in order to remove toxins, vitamins, or minerals from the body. Therefore there is an exchange, rather than a robbing of the body as with purified waters.

By adding the silica to the purified waters, the water loses its solvency and therefore cannot rob the body of as many nutrients as the purified water would do if it were not partially saturated with something.